Global multi-stakeholder initiatives (global MSIs) have become a cornerstone of modern governance. However, critics disparage MSIs (1) for giving too much power to private actors, specifically corporations, and (2) for allowing organizations from one state to influence another’s affairs. This criticism holds true in particular for the Habermasian approach to political corporate social responsibility (political CSR). By contrast, this paper grounds global MSIs in John Rawls’s theory of justice, arguing that both legitimacy issues can be overcome when all those affected by a global MSI possess a means of contestation able to effectively contest the MSI’s activities. This entails that global MSIs, when affecting states that are unwilling or unable to protect their own citizens, must themselves provide their stakeholders with such means. It is argued that this Rawls-based approach to political CSR can rectify the shortcomings of the Habermasian approach without requiring a change in the composition of MSIs.

This paper focuses on the feature-based visual-inertial odometry (VIO) in dynamic illumination environments. While the performance of most existing feature-based VIO methods is degraded by the dynamic illumination, which leads to unstable feature association, we propose a tightly-coupled VIO algorithm termed RAFT-VINS, integrating a Lite-RAFT tracker into the visual inertial navigation system (VINS). The key module of this odometry algorithm is a lightweight optical flow network designed for accurate feature tracking with real-time operation. It guarantees robust feature association in dynamic illumination environments and thereby ensures the performance of the odometry. Besides, to further improve the accuracy of the pose estimation, a moving consistency check strategy is developed in RAFT-VINS to identify and remove the outlier feature points. Meanwhile, a tightly-coupled optimization-based framework is employed to fuse IMU and visual measurements in the sliding window for efficient and accurate pose estimation. Through comprehensive experiments in the public datasets and real-world scenarios, the proposed RAFT-VINS is validated for its capacity to provide trustable pose estimates in challenging dynamic illumination environments. Our codes are open-sourced on https://github.com/USTC-AIS-Lab/RAFT-VINS.

Our essay aims to offer a biography of Elena Sengal (1911–1962), an Italian citizen of Ethiopian origin, whose life offers important elements to better understand both Fascist and postwar Italy. Elena was born into an Italo-Ethiopian family and became an Italian citizen after the naturalisation of her father, Sengal Workneh, a former Italian colonial subject and a lecturer in Amharic and Tigrinya at the Istituto Orientale in Naples. She grew up in Naples where she graduated and later held a teaching position, following in her father’s footsteps. When in 1939 her partner, Guido Cucci, fell in Ethiopia fighting the Ethiopian resistance, Elena found herself alone with a newborn child and struggled to make a living. Her life did not improve with the end of Fascism. Indeed, in postwar Italy it became so unbearable that she relocated to Ethiopia. However, racism and exclusion accompanied her life in the East African country too. This biography is based on archival materials as well as a body of personal letters of Elena Sengal, kindly made available by her granddaughter Maria Elena Cucci.

Seed chemical composition and oxidation after long-term storage may affect seed longevity, seed germination and seedling normality after planting. By screening the entire USDA cultivated peanut germplasm collection for fatty acid composition, we identified the -01 inventory of accession PI 268941 with the following characteristics: (a) two distinct seed fatty acid profiles (high oleate 78.9% and normal oleate 48.19%); (b) two FAD2B genotypes (with and without a functional point mutation of 435DelT within the FAD2B gene); and (c) uniform plant morphology and seed-coat color. This inventory had been stored at −18°C within the same sealed aluminum bag for 30 years and was acquired to investigate the relationship between seed chemical composition and seed performance after planting using individual seed analysis. Our results indicated that (1) the spontaneous point-functional mutation 435T deletion of FAD2B within the accession led to the high and normal oleate seeds; (2) additional unidentified compounds observed during analysis may be due to a higher oxidation rate in normal oleate seeds than in high oleate seeds; (3) the high oleate seeds had significantly higher rates of seed germination and seedling normality than the normal oleate seeds; and (4) the seedling performance highly and significantly correlated with fatty acid composition and extra peaks. Our results suggest that high oleic acid significantly extends the viability of long-term stored peanut seeds. The information revealed in this study will be useful for germplasm preservation as well as the selection of seeds for planting and agricultural production based on seed fatty acid composition and storage length.

The tension between John Neville Figgis’s pluralist political theory and his defence of the truth claims of Christianity in the public square makes it difficult to assess the social implications of his personalism. This article considers Figgis’s theories of classical pluralism and corporate personhood and how they relate to his theological anthropology. God makes humans for membership in group persons, paradigmatically the Church, and also other associations that should be free to pursue their corporate ends and govern themselves. The just state coordinates and ensures peace between group and individual persons and allows them to freely play as they pursue the good. This perspective on the modern state and free associations offers an alternative to the modern tendency towards state centralization and individual atomism. But Figgis’s conceptions of freedom, love, corporate personhood and the state introduce a challenge for the contemporary reader. He implies that the state should be a neutral arbiter among individuals and groups. Joseph Ratzinger argues for the good of Christians living and enacting laws and policies that reflect their Christian consciences. Figgis’s Christian personalism informs and challenges Ratzinger’s social theory.

We define a notion of tracial $\mathcal {Z}$-absorption for simple not necessarily unital C*-algebras, study it systematically and prove its permanence properties. This extends the notion defined by Hirshberg and Orovitz for unital C*-algebras. The Razak-Jacelon algebra, simple nonelementary C*-algebras with tracial rank zero, and simple purely infinite C*-algebras are tracially $\mathcal {Z}$-absorbing. We obtain the first purely infinite examples of tracially $\mathcal {Z}$-absorbing C*-algebras which are not $\mathcal {Z}$-absorbing. We use techniques from reduced free products of von Neumann algebras to construct these examples. A stably finite example was given by Z. Niu and Q. Wang in 2021. We study the Cuntz semigroup of a simple tracially $\mathcal {Z}$-absorbing C*-algebra and prove that it is almost unperforated and the algebra is weakly almost divisible.

This meta-analysis of 79 studies evaluates the effectiveness of high variability phonetic training (HVPT) for the development of second language (L2) speech perception and explores learner-related and methodological variables that influence training effects. The overall medium-to-large effects of HVPT on L2 speech perception support the effectiveness of HVPT, for both pretest-posttest comparison (g = 0.92, k = 96) and treatment-control comparison (g = 0.67, k = 32), confirm long-term retention of perception gains, and, to some extent, indicate generalization of learning to novel stimuli. Training effects are influenced by several key variables (length of L2 learning, response labels, type of training task, type of testing task, total training time, target phones, and number of talkers). The findings provide compelling evidence to support the efficacy of HVPT for L2 perceptual learning and suggest circumstances under which training effects are optimized.

In this paper we derive cumulant bounds for subgraph counts and power-weighted edge lengths in a class of spatial random networks known as weight-dependent random connection models. These bounds give rise to different probabilistic results, from which we mainly focus on moderate deviations of the respective statistics, but also show a concentration inequality and a normal approximation result. This involves dealing with long-range spatial correlations induced by the profile function and the weight distribution. We start by deriving the bounds for the classical case of a Poisson vertex set, and then provide extensions to α-determinantal processes.

This study investigates the dynamics of water droplets within a Batchelor vortex. Such an analytically described flow structure serves here as a model that may capture the essence of a trailing vortex. A Lagrangian approach is used to analyse the coupling between droplet motion and the flow field generated by the vortex. Under certain thermodynamic and hydrodynamic conditions, droplets may undergo evaporation and condensation when circulating the vortex core due to sharp changes in the environmental conditions induced by the vortex. The vortex-induced pressure drop is quantified using a non-dimensional vortex Euler number, revealing conditions required for condensation initiation within the vortex core. The onset of condensation is characterised by defining a mass transfer coefficient, indicating the direction and extent of mass transfer to the droplets. Our study uncovered a distinct clustering phenomenon linked to the initial Stokes number, with droplets showing a tendency to aggregate at higher Stokes numbers. The presented model may offer valuable insights into droplet dynamics within trailing vortices, contributing to improved modelling and prediction of droplet transport phenomena near trailing vortices.

Turnover intention constitutes a challenge for organizations. Meaningful work and employee engagement can reduce turnover intention, but their relationship is complex. This study aims to understand how meaningful work, work and organizational engagement, and turnover intention interact with each other. Using a structural equation model with data from 562 employees, meaningful work was examined as the independent variable, turnover intention as the dependent variable, and work and organizational engagement as serial mediators. Results show that work engagement partially mediates the relationship between meaningful work and organizational engagement, and organizational engagement partially mediates the link between work engagement and turnover intention. Additionally, a serial mediation effect of work and organizational engagement on the relationship between meaningful work and turnover intention was confirmed. Therefore, we encourage organizations to provide meaningfulness to their employees’ jobs and engage them within their job and organization not only to promote retention, but also to develop an engaged, healthy and sustainable workforce that supports both organizational sustainability and general societal well-being.

The path navigation of robot in an entirely known space is presented by various researchers in the recent times. The navigational complexity arises when a robot moves in a completely unknown and complex environment from one defined start to a designated desired location. As the success of the nature-inspired algorithms in the unclear navigational problem is better, therefore, an improved butterfly optimization algorithm (IBOA) to determine the optimal feasible path for a humanoid robot navigating through a platform cluttered with both known and unfamiliar barriers is presented in this study. The BOA is inspired by the food-gathering habits of butterflies, where the sense of smell is the vital parameter in the global optimal search. However, the performance of this technique in the complex environment is poor, as a result, the chances of being trapped in local minima are more. Hence, the BOA is improved by using a nonlinear weight reduction strategy in updating the position of the butterflies in every iteration. The simulation is carried out in the Webots platform by considering variable-legged robot, NAO, in an unfamiliar environment. The outcomes derived from the simulation and real assessments demonstrate the potential of the proposed technique and compare with other existing algorithms, which highlights the potential and efficacy of the proposed IBOA algorithm.

Courts in new democracies sometimes encounter challenges in gaining public trust, even after achieving judicial independence. This study examines how judicial communication can help build trust in the judiciary. Specifically, I address two questions regarding judicial communication: first, what motivates judges to engage in communication, and second, how this communication influences the public’s trust in the judiciary. I argue that members of a judiciary engage in communication to protect the judiciary’s reputation and that this communication fosters the public’s trust in the judiciary. This is because improved communication enhances the public’s understanding of the courts. To test my theoretical argument, I analyze a unique judicial reform in Taiwan, where a public-oriented communication strategy using social media was introduced. Using in-depth interviews with members of the judiciary and a difference-in-differences design, I find that, first, judges seek to protect judicial reputation by adopting a communication strategy characterized by information clarity and accessibility. Second, individuals more likely to be exposed to this communication, particularly frequent digital users, demonstrate increased judicial trust. My findings have implications for how courts in new democracies can use communication strategies to bolster judicial trust.

This study presents a novel approach using machine learning, specifically Random Forest modelling, to create a sensitivity map that addresses the conflict between offshore wind farms (OWFs) and wintering waterbirds in the southern Baltic Sea. This region is crucial or of great importance for wintering species such as the Long-tailed Duck Clangula hyemalis and Velvet Scoter Melanitta fusca. In 2020, the southern and central Baltic Sea hosted approximately one million wintering birds, including over 560,000 Long-tailed Ducks (35% of the species’ biogeographical population), 230,000 Velvet Scoters (41% of the global population), and 4,500 Black Guillemot Cepphus grylle (8% of the Baltic population). Within the Polish Exclusive Economic Zone (PEEZ), 21 wind farms are planned, totalling a capacity of 17.6 GW with an estimated 1,164 turbines. To assess potential risks, a Normalised Overlap Index (NOI) was calculated for each wind farm, quantifying the level of potential threat to wintering birds. High conflict zones, such as the Southern Middle Bank and Pomeranian Bay, were identified, where wind farms significantly overlap with areas of high bird density. Although the wind farms do not intersect with Natura 2000 sites, partial overlaps with Important Bird Areas (IBAs) were noted. The method developed in this study not only addresses the challenges in the Baltic Sea but also offers potential applications in other marine and terrestrial environments. This framework provides a novel tool for evaluating and mitigating the impacts of renewable energy development on wildlife, contributing to the sustainable expansion of green energy solutions globally.